Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. He was the author of the satirical prose novel Gulliver's Travels (1726) and the creator of the fictional island of Lilliput. He is regarded by many as the greatest satirist of the Georgian era and one of the foremost prose authors in the history of English and world literature.
Swift also authored works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704) and An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1708). He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—including Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. In 1713, he was appointed the dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swift". His trademark deadpan and ironic style of writing, particularly in later works such as A Modest Proposal (1729), has led to such satire being subsequently termed as "Swiftian". He is also credited with inventing the popular woman's name "Vanessa" through his poem Cadenus and Vanessa (1726).
During the early part of his career, he travelled extensively in Ireland and Great Britain, and these trips helped develop his understanding of human nature and social conditions, which he would later depict in his satirical works. Swift was also very active in clerical circles due to his affiliations to St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He had supported the Glorious Revolution and joined the Whigs party early on. Swift was related to many prominent figures of his time, including John Temple, John Dryden, William Davenant, and Francis Godwin. In 1700, Swift moved to Trim, County Meath, and many of his major works were written during this time. His writings reflected much of his political experiences of the previous decade, especially those with the British government under the Tories. Swift used several pseudonyms to publish his early works, with Isaac Bickerstaff being the most recognisable one. Scholars of his works have also suggested that these pseudonyms might have protected Swift from persecution in the politically sensitive conditions of England and Ireland under which he wrote many of his popular satires.
Since the late 18th century, Swift has emerged as one of the most popular Irish authors globally. His best-known novel Gulliver's Travels, which is one of the most famous classics of English and world literature, has retained its position as the most printed book by an Irish writer in libraries and bookstores worldwide. He continues to be held in high regard in Ireland with many streets, monuments, festivals, and regional tourist attractions named after him. Swift has also influenced several notable authors over the following centuries, including John Ruskin and George Orwell.
Contents
Biography
Early life
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake in Leicestershire. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. His maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. In 1634 the vicar was convicted of Puritan practices. Sometime thereafter, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter Abigail, fled to Ireland.
Swift's father joined his elder brother, Godwin, in the practice of law in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born. He died of syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town.
His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift, a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.
At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his wet nurse to her hometown of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. He said that there he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three.
Swift's family had several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of poet John Dryden. The same grandmother's aunt Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great-grandmother Margaret (Godwin) Swift was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, who was rumored to be a godson of William Shakespeare.
Swift's benefactor and uncle Godwin Swift took primary responsibility for the young man, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also attended by philosopher George Berkeley). He arrived there at the age of six, where he was expected to have already learned the basic declensions in Latin. He had not and thus began his schooling in a lower form. Swift left the school in 1682, when he was 15.
Adult life
Swift was studying for his master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who had arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668. He had retired from public service to his country estate, to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining his employer's confidence, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance." Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple introduced his secretary to William III and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.
Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of an impoverished widow who acted as companion to Temple's sister Lady Giffard. Swift was her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella", and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.
In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness consisted of fits of vertigo or giddiness, now believed to be Ménière's disease, and it continued to plague him throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1692. He then left Moor Park, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, in order to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland. He was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor in 1694, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.
Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, he may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, who he called "Varina". Waring was the sister of an old college friend.
A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, remaining there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), though Battle was not published until 1704.
Works
Swift was a prolific writer. The collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965–) comprises fourteen volumes. A 1983 edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodgers, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.
Major prose works
Swift's first major prose/satire work, A Tale of a Tub (1704, 1710), demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.
In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning a defence of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns), holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). The final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defence on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.
In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions for the Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on 30 March claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary. According to other sources, Richard Steele used the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff, and was the one who wrote about the "death" of John Partridge and published it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.
The Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to mint copper coinage for Ireland. It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in order to make a profit. In these "letters", Swift posed as a shopkeeper or draper to criticise the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no one turned Swift in, although there was an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the publisher John Harding. General outcry against the coinage caused Wood's patent to be rescinded in September 1725, and the coins were kept out of circulation. In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best achievements.
Essays, tracts, pamphlets, periodicals
"A Meditation upon a Broom-stick" (1703–10)
"A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind" (1707–11)
The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (1708–09)
"An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity" (1708): Full text
The Intelligencer (with Thomas Sheridan (1719–1788)): Text: Project Gutenberg Archived 30 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
The Examiner (1710): Texts: Project Gutenberg Archived 30 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
"A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue" (1712)
"On the Conduct of the Allies" (1711)
"Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation" (1713): Full text: Bartleby.com Archived 22 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine
"The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, set forth in their generous encouragement of the author of the crisis" (1714)
"A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Entered into Holy Orders" (1720)
"A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet" (1721): Full text: Bartleby.com Archived 5 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine
Drapier's Letters (1724, 1725): Full text: Project Gutenberg Archived 30 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
"Bon Mots de Stella" (1726): a curiously irrelevant appendix to "Gulliver's Travels"
Poems
"Ode to the Athenian Society", Swift's first publication, printed in The Athenian Mercury in the supplement of Feb 14, 1691. Archived 13 May 2023 at the Wayback Machine
Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Texts at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two Archived 7 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
"Baucis and Philemon" (1706–09): Full text: Munseys[link removed]
"A Description of the Morning" (1709): Full annotated text: U of Toronto; Another text: U of Virginia[link removed]
"A Description of a City Shower" (1710): Full text: Poetry Foundation
"Cadenus and Vanessa" (1713): Full text: Munseys[link removed]
"Phillis, or, the Progress of Love" (1719): Full text: theotherpages.org Archived 25 October 2005 at the Wayback Machine
Stella's birthday poems:
1719. Full annotated text: U of Toronto
1720. Full text
1727. Full text: U of Toronto
"The Progress of Beauty" (1719–20): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
"The Progress of Poetry" (1720): Full text: theotherpages.org Archived 25 October 2005 at the Wayback Machine
"A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General" (1722): Full text: U of Toronto
"To Quilca, a Country House not in Good Repair" (1725): Full text: U of Toronto
Correspondence, personal writings
"When I Come to Be Old" – Swift's resolutions. (1699)
A Journal to Stella (1710–13): Full text (presented as daily entries): The Journal to Stella; Extracts: OurCivilisation.com;
Letters:
Selected Letters
To Oxford and Pope: OurCivilisation.com
The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Edited by David Woolley. In four volumes, plus index volume. Frankfurt am Main; New York : P. Lang, c. 1999 – c. 2007.
Sermons, prayers
Three Sermons and Three Prayers. Full text: U of Adelaide, Project Gutenberg Archived 24 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
Three Sermons: I. on mutual subjection. II. on conscience. III. on the Trinity. Text: Project Gutenberg
Writings on Religion and the Church. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume One Archived 30 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine, Volume Two Archived 30 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
"The First He Wrote Oct. 17, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org Archived 18 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
"The Second Prayer Was Written Nov. 6, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org Archived 18 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
Miscellany
Directions to Servants (1731): Full text: Jonathon Swift Archive
A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738)
"Thoughts on Various Subjects." Full text: U of Adelaide Archived 14 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
Historical Writings: Project Gutenberg Archived 30 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine
Swift quotes at Bartleby: Bartleby.com Archived 26 October 2005 at the Wayback Machine – 59 quotations, with notes
The Benefit of Farting Explained, published under the pseudonym Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.
Legacy
Literary
Since his death, Swift came to be regarded by many as the greatest satirist of the Georgian era, and among the foremost writers of satire in the English language. Thomas Sheridan called him "a man whose original genius and uncommon talents have raised him, in the general estimation, above all other writers of the age". John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him. George Orwell named him as one of the writers he most admired, despite disagreeing with him on almost every moral and political issue. Modernist poet Edith Sitwell wrote a fictional biography of Swift, titled I Live Under a Black Sun and published in 1937. A. L. Rowse wrote a biography of Swift, essays on his works, and edited the Pan Books edition of Gulliver's Travels.
Literary scholar Frank Stier Goodwin wrote a full biography of Swift: Jonathan Swift – Giant in Chains, issued by Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York (1940).
In 1982, Soviet playwright Grigory Gorin wrote a theatrical fantasy called The House That Swift Built based on the last years of Jonathan Swift's life and episodes of his works. The play was filmed by director Mark Zakharov in the 1984 two-part television movie of the same name. Jake Arnott features him in his 2017 novel The Fatal Tree. A 2017 analysis of library holdings data revealed that Swift is the most popular Irish author, and that Gulliver's Travels is the most widely held work of Irish literature in libraries globally.
The first woman to write a biography of Swift was Sophie Shilleto Smith, who published Dean Swift in 1910.
Eponymous places
Swift crater, a crater on Mars's moon Deimos, is named after Jonathan Swift, who predicted the existence of the moons of Mars.
In honour of Swift's long-term residence in Trim, there are several monuments, statues and streets in the town. Most notable is Swift's Street, named after him. Trim also held a recurring festival in honour of Swift, called the Trim Swift Festival. In 2020, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has not been held since.